DRAFT for instructor review — please check your camp sections for accuracy and send photos/videos for the [MEDIA] placeholders. Only share media with photo-release-cleared campers or with no identifiable campers.
What a summer! From June 1 through July 31, the Illinois MakerLab hosted five different week-long camps across eight camp weeks — sixteen sessions in all — and our lab in BIF 3030 was buzzing with young makers every single one of them.
- 72 campers joined us this summer, filling 112 camp seats across 16 sessions
- 12 of our 16 sessions sold out — including every single Minecraft + 3D Printing session
- 17 campers loved it enough to come back for two or more camps, and 20 families registered for multiple weeks
- Two brand-new robotics camps launched — and both nearly sold out their entire runs
[MEDIA: group photo or lab-wide shot from any week — no identifiable campers without photo release]
Our flagship camp ran six sold-out sessions — 48 campers in all, making it far and away our most popular program. Campers built creative worlds in Minecraft, learned the fundamentals of digital modeling, and turned their in-game designs into real, hold-in-your-hands 3D prints. For many of our youngest makers (ages 10+), this was their first taste of design and digital fabrication, and watching a first-timer pull their own creation off the print bed never gets old.
[MEDIA: Minecraft camp — campers with their printed builds]
Across two sessions, 15 campers dove into computer-aided design the way engineers do: starting with sketching and technical drawings, then building real 3D modeling skills in Fusion 360. Informed by the Next Generation Science Standards, this camp is all about spatial reasoning and design thinking — and the final prints showed just how far a camper can go in five days.
[MEDIA: Adventures camp — CAD screenshots or final printed designs]
One of the freshest intersections in making right now: 15 campers learned how generative AI actually works, practiced prompting AI tools for creative design and ideation, then refined those designs into printable models. Every camper walked away with their own AI-assisted creation as a physical object — an idea that started as a text prompt and ended as something real on the table.
[MEDIA: GenAI camp — AI-generated designs next to their 3D prints]
In one of our two brand-new robotics camps, small teams of six campers 3D printed the shell of an SO-ARM100 open-source robot arm, snapped it onto real motors and wiring, and had a working arm by mid-week. The highlight every session: the leader-follower setup, where campers physically guide one arm and watch a second arm mirror every move in real time — then train it to pick up and place objects on its own. Seventeen campers built and trained arms across three sessions.
[MEDIA: Bayu - robot arm final builds photo] [MEDIA: Ling - Robot Arm session video]
Our other new camp introduced campers to Reachy Mini, a desktop robot with a camera, microphones, expressive LED eyes, and animated antennas — all programmable in Python. Over five days, 17 campers (across three sessions) taught Reachy to see, listen, and talk back, loading real AI models from Hugging Face's ecosystem onto a robot that recognizes faces and answers questions. Hearing a robot respond to code a twelve-year-old wrote that morning is exactly the kind of moment this lab exists for.
[MEDIA: Reachy Mini camp — robots in action, campers programming]
Camps like these only work because of the people running them. A huge thank-you to our summer instructors — including Bayu and Ling, who led our robotics programs through their very first summer — and to all of our MakerLab gurus who kept sixteen sessions' worth of printers humming, filament flowing, and robots charged. And thank you to every family who trusted us with a week (or two, or four) of your camper's summer.
We're already thinking about next year — returning favorites, and a few new ideas we're excited to explore. Look for the Summer 2027 camp lineup and registration details in early 2027. Until then, keep making!
Questions about camps or the MakerLab? Reach us at uimakerlab@illinois.edu or visit us in BIF Room 3030.